There Goes the Sun

VIEW FROM SPACE. Japan's YOHKOH satellite captured three series of images, such as this animation, of the moon moving across the sun's disk. The pictures are made from the sun's emissions of x-rays. Scientists hope to gain important insights by analyzing the changes in the radiation as the edge of the moon moves across solar "hot spots."

Image: GOES

MOONSHADOW. GOES, for Geosynchromous Operational Environmental Satellite, snapped a series of images as the dark "zone of totality" swept across the Pacific, Carribbean and Atlantic Oceans. Details of the path of the eclipse can also be seen on the accompanying map.

For millennia, humans have stared in wonder and awe as the moon's shadow briefly blocked out the sun. But there is still much to be learned--and the total solar eclipse that swept across the Caribbean on February 26 is likely to be the most closely observed ever. Astronomers and physicists aimed telescopes and other high-technology instruments at the sun's corona during the eclipse hoping to find new clues to the engine that drives our solar system.

The solar eclipse, billed as the "biggest" since the eclipse of July 1991, was visible as the moon's shadow blocked the disk of the sun in a band that began just below the Equator in the South Pacific, passed over South America and arced across the Atlantic toward North Africa. Although the skies dimmed far to the north (20 percent in New York City) and south, the impressive and ever mysterious solar corona was only visible in the narrow zone of total eclipse.

Image: NASA

ECLIPSE CHRONOLOGY. As an eclipse progresses, the moon's shadow gradually obscures more and more of the sun's disk, forming an ever-narrowing crescent. In the final moments, the last light of the sun bursts out, creating a display that looks like a diamond wedding ring and reveals "Bailey's Beads," bright spots created as the last light spews forth from valleys in the lunar mountains. During totality, the corona appears as a complete ring. The process reverses as the moon moves on.

During the fleeting three or four minutes of totality, scientists made observations from ground stations and research aircraft flying out of Panama. Meanwhile, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and a Japanese satellite called YOHKOH recorded new data from space. GOES, an Earth-sensing satellite, tracked the passage of the moon's shadow as it sped from west to east across the southern latitudes.